shoulda put a ring on it
by moeten
Summary: "what to do with your wedding ring after almost divorcing but then getting back together with your spouse" isn't actually the title of a self help book, but probably ought to be.


_i was joking around about 'scenes that will never make it into my big story,' and. i personally think of this as taking place in the same universe as 'turned around' and 'how close,' but it really has no bearing on either story. just some snarky b/r stuff, i guess._

* * *

No one had ever told Robin what you were supposed to do with your rings after nearly getting a divorce. Which, given current divorce rates in North America, struck her as something of a critical information gap. Does she give them back? Keep them? Sell them? She hadn't needed or wanted the money; she hadn't needed or wanted the contact, no matter how tenuous, with her soon-to-be-ex husband.

For a while, Robin had carried her rings in an envelope she'd never addressed or mailed; then she'd wrapped them in a sock and left them in the bottom of her carry-on bag. She'd come across them sometimes, groping for her toiletry bag or a clean shirt, and wonder, _what am I gonna do with this?_ Always feeling a pang of guilt, hopelessness, regret.

Funny how things turn out.

Robin sits down on the bed — Barney's bed. Hers, too, maybe, in the master bedroom of his — their — apartment. It had been a long road coming here — coming _back_ here. They'd yelled (a lot), argued (a lot), cried (and agreed to never tell anyone), had had make up sex ( _a lot_ ), and were finally here, back in this place, ready to try again. It hadn't been easy by any means. But here she was, sitting on their bed, a sock in her hands.

She unfurls it, pulls the rings from inside the cotton, picks a piece of lint off her engagement ring. Then she looks at them in her palm for a minute. This is clearly another piece of information missing from general education. Does she just… put them back on? Should they make a thing out of it? Should she ask him to put them on her? She feels a wave of awkward embarrassment at the very idea of making such a production of it: it's just jewelry, for God's sake. Robin shoves them onto her hand, the weight unfamiliar after so many months. Crap, she got them on backwards. Wedding ring first, engagement second, right? She slides them back off, and tries it again. But, huh, the first way kinda looked good. Is there like, a law against wearing them like that? Because, just aesthetically…

Robin groans. They should make guidebooks for this crap.

* * *

 _ten minutes later…_

* * *

Eventually she decides on an order she likes (engagement ring first, because… screw it) and puts her bag away, finishes getting dressed, applies her makeup, and goes to find Barney. Uh, goes to get some coffee. She finds him sitting at the kitchen table, reading the _Wall Street Journal_.

It's been almost two weeks since Robin unofficially moved back in, and several months since they started trying to get back together, but she still smiles, feels a warm pang in her chest, when she sees him like this, first thing in the morning: still sleepy and not yet performing for the world, sans jacket and tie, his cuffs and collar unbuttoned. She's always liked it, seeing her husband… ex husband… (re-husband?)… looking like an actual human being; they're still fresh enough into their reunion that it fills her with nostalgia and a feeling of ease, seeing him relaxed and defenses down, like it's a message: _yes, things are going to be okay._

"Morning," she says, keeping this gross feelings stuff to herself, brushing her hair away from her neck with her left hand.

"Hey," he says. She catches him glancing up at her, smiling back down at his paper, but they both play it cool. They are cool grown up people, not emotional sops.

"Do you want some more coffee?" Robin asks.

"Yeah, cool," he says. He hands her his mug; Robin takes it with her left hand. He doesn't notice anything. She gets them both coffee.

She has absolutely no desire to make a big production out of it, announce to grand orchestration that she is wearing her rings once more, this second try is now official — _really_ — except after fifteen minutes of pointedly flashing her left hand around, handing Barney like three bagels, and generally trying to subtly get him to notice the change, he… is still reading the paper, and Robin's never been very good at this whole 'subtle' thing.

So she sits down across from him at the kitchen table and _does not_ grab the newspaper from him and throw it on the floor in a fit of pique. She rests her chin in the palm of her left hand, making sure the rings are angled towards her ( _re?_ ) husband. "Did you sleep well?" she asks, leaning forward, shifting her hand a little.

"Uh, pretty well," Barney says, giving her a quick, concerned glance.

Robin reaches across the table and lays her hand on his. It's a little awkward, since Barney isn't really expecting any over-the-table hand holding and it's a bit of a reach for her. He looks up from the financial section, clearly confused. "Uhhh," he says.

She waits for him to _look at her fucking hand_ and smiles beatifically at him. It's maybe a little strained.

"Robin, uh," Barney says, with all the grace of a car careening towards a pole, "I'm really happy we're back together and all that, but since I don't have a uterus, this clingy stuff is kinda weird."

" _I PUT MY RINGS BACK ON, MORON_!" Robin snaps, maybe a tiny bit louder than she'd planned: Barney hastily pushes his chair backwards in a well-honed instinct to get out of her way.

His eyes are wide and alarmed, and Robin crosses her arms in a huff. She watches his gaze dart to her hand… then back up to her face, checking to make sure she isn't going to shout again (jury is still out on that one), then back to her hand.

His posture relaxes, and his face breaks into a wide, soppy grin. "Awww!"

" _Awww_ ," she echoes sarcastically, feeling her face flush. "You didn't even notice!"

"You didn't say anything! Anyway, there's parts of your body I like to look at way more than your _hands_ ," Barney says, inching back towards the table, still grinning like an idiot; then he falters and adds more seriously: "Are we, uh," he makes a quick waving hand gesture.

"Yeah," Robin says, picking up on the telepathy. She looks down at her crossed arms, her left hand. "I think so. Or…?"

"No! I mean: yeah; for sure, totally," he says quickly. She feels her mouth curl into a smile. He grins back.

"Where did you put yours?" she asks, uncrossing her arms, laying her hands on the table. Aware he's looking at the rings now, she's weirdly conscious over her movements, the not-quite-natural way she places her hand on the tabletop. "We should just start wearing them again, see how long it takes the others to notice and or flip out. Because I'm thinking _every single one_ of our friends will be quicker on the uptake than… Barney?"

He's gazing at her rings with a dreamy expression that suggests he stopped listening a minute ago. "Huh?" he even starts a little.

"Your ring?" Robin asks, raising her eyebrows. "Where did you stash it?"

"Oh," says Barney, nodding. "Right. Yeah." He doesn't move or say anything else.

She looks at him.

He looks back.

There's a bit of a silence, and then Barney continues, nodding earnestly: "I threw it away."

" _ **WHAT**_ **?** "

* * *

 _six months ago…_

* * *

Barney stood on the deck of the ferry, the cool ocean breeze ruffling his hair, stinging at his eyes. In front of him, the gleaming buildings of Manhattan slowly shrunk from view as the ferry headed towards Staten Island: towards home. Barney hadn't lived on Staten Island since his twenties, but with his mother and extended family still calling the island home, home was what it remains. There was nothing left for him on Manhattan. Not with Marshall and Lily moving to Long Island, not with Ted and Tracy moving to Westchester, not with Robin…

 _Robin_ …

It had all ended so quickly. Sure, they'd had problems, but he'd turned around, and it was over. It the space between one breath and the next. Had he done something wrong? Maybe he'd been kidding himself, three years ago, thinking he could make someone happy, just by being him. Maybe he just had never been cut out for any of this: love, relationships, marriage… just as he'd always suspected. He'd gotten cocky, thought too highly of himself, and lost the best woman in the universe as a result.

He tries not to think about it much, doesn't _want_ to think about it much. Admitting how much it hurts would just make him feel sad and useless, and if there are two things Barney Stinson is not, it is sad and useless — no, he's _awesome_. And right now, that's about the only thing he has left to fall back on.

But he keeps thinking about her, in odd moments, in normal moments, constantly through the day. The first few weeks, he'd been angry, trying to blame her, remembering her bad habits and annoying traits. But then he'd started to miss her…

He sighs, uncharacteristically, shivering slightly in the briny wind. In a slow, deliberate movement, he reaches his hand into his jacket pocket, his eyes fixed on the Manhattan skyline. He closes his fist around the object there.

He has to stop thinking about her. He _wants_ to stop thinking about her. He'll never talk to, text, e-mail, or even see Robin Scherbatsky again. He just wants to forget. Put it behind him. _Move on_.

Barney leans against the railing of the ferry and holds his wedding ring in his hand. He stays like that for a few minutes, shivering in the breeze, and then extends his hand over the railing. The ring drops into the ferry's wake, noiseless, without so much as a ripple indicating it was ever there.

Then it's just Barney, alone and cold on the deck of the Staten Island Ferry, the sun setting orange and bright behind the Statue of Liberty.

* * *

"True story," Barney says, gazing sadly into the middle distance as he finishes his tale.

"Bullshit," says Robin.

He raises an eyebrow at her. "I'm sorry, did you just tell me my emotional story of painfully letting go of a lost hope for happiness is _bullshit_?"

"You have dragged me on that stupid ferry to visit your mom literally a million times, and just to _start_ , I've never once seen the decks not crawling with tourists. Standing alone, watching the sun set behind the Statue of Liberty? Come on, bro."

Barney tilts his head and nods, conceding that point. "Okay, there might have been a few people taking pictures as I mournfully attempted to let go of my past; my love; my hopes; my dreams… but other than _that_? True. Story."

"Was 'My Heart Will Go On' playing over the loudspeakers?" Robin asks sweetly.

He huffs out a sigh and runs his hand through his hair. "I threw it away, okay?"

Robin waits to see if he breaks. "It's not just a stupid melodramatic story?" she asks, to clarify.

"Threw it away," he repeats, avoiding her gaze. Robin falls silent. "What?" he asks.

"Nothing," she lies. "Nice to know you meant it when you said _I never stopped loved you_ and _letting you go was the biggest mistake of my life_ ," Robin says bitterly. This whole thing suddenly feels stupid and pointless. It's not like she was expecting Barney to have a little shrine for his wedding ring, but… to just throw it away, like yesterday's garbage? He hadn't even bothered to get a storage locker, or…

"Of course I meant it!" he says, rolling his eyes. "But _at the time_ , it's not like I thought we'd ever get back together."

"Really giving me high hopes for round two of marriage," Robin says bitterly. She pushes back from the table, feeling somehow rejected, and can't sit and look at him anymore. She grabs his and her empty mugs, clearing the table to look busy.

"Robin," he says, exasperated.

She can feel the fight coming on: it's not like the road to their getting back together hasn't been littered with them, and maybe that's normal, even good, but right now she's sick of it. She thought this would be some big romantic moment, and now she's just upset. "No," she says, "no, okay? I don't want to fight about this. You got rid of it. Whatever. It doesn't matter."

Robin hears Barney's chair scrape back as he stands to… something, talk down to her probably, and she doesn't want to fight, and she whirls around to tell him to drop it or else, as she throws the mugs down into the sink, and somewhere between the two actions, knocks a glass on the countertop to the floor.

It shatters in an explosion of breaking glass. "Dammit!" Robin swears, too many things going wrong in too short a period of time. She presses her hands to her head, trying to steady herself.

Barney is looking at her like he's scared of her, and the whole thing is such a disaster that it suddenly strikes Robin as a little bit funny. Glass on the floor, a thwarted romantic reunion, standing in an apartment she's still hesitant to call _hers_ again, wedding rings on her hand. This is such a goddamn _mess_.

"So," Barney says cautiously, "did _you_ sleep well?"

She finds herself fighting a smile, and he relaxes. "Jesus Christ," she says, leaning against the counter. "I'm just a mess."

"Nah," he says lightly. He asks, "Are we fighting?" She shakes her head no, and he adds: "I'll find the ring."

She sighs, carefully kneeling down to pick up the bigger pieces of the broken glass. "The ring you dropped over the side of the Staten Island ferry?"

He thinks it over for a minute. "Yeah."

"That's impossible," she points out dryly. Even by Barney's usual ridiculous standards, it's far out there.

"Please," he says, "if those scientists could find the Heart of the Ocean, I can find some stupid _wedding ring_."

She looks up to see him leaning against the countertop, watching her pick up the glass. "Just a stupid ring, huh?" she asks. She's expecting him to wince and realize his mistake, but his expression doesn't change.

"I'm gonna find it," he says, seriously. "The next time you see me," he raises his left hand, "there's gonna be a _ring_ on this finger."

* * *

 _five hours later…_

* * *

Halfway through his fourth loop on the ferry to the island and back, Barney is starting to think that maybe — just _maybe_ — this wasn't the best plan in the world. Sure, he has a diver on call, but even Dive Guy needs more location than 'New York Bay' to go on, and Barney isn't exactly getting hit by flashes of insight or memory, riding the ferry back and forth.

He is, however, getting hit with lots of camera cases, roving tourists, and other such lowlives.

Barney decides to call it a day and heads inside, finding an empty spot on one of the benches and pulling out his phone. He goes through his texts listlessly, trying to think of a new strategy: eyeballing it clearly isn't working.

He tries to remember the day in question. It had been chilly, he remembers, and the wind kept blowing his hair around. It had all been pretty melodramatic, and not just in the story he'd embellished for Robin earlier: the setting sun, the autumn wind, the choppy water, the tears in his eyes… Even at the time, a part of him had been like, _yeah, this is super dramatic and awesome._

Wait.

Hold up. His hair wasn't long enough to blow around in the autumn breeze, and it was autumn _now_.

"Dammit!" Barney swears loudly, causing the old lady sitting next to him on the bench to jump. He turns to her, filled with outrage and indignity. "Lady, I had this great story. It was _awesome_. Have you ever seen Titanic? You're like, a thousand years old, you probably lived it."

Old Lady doesn't deny it. He takes her silence as an affirmative, and pays no attention to her gaze, locked on her novel. "My story was _just like Titanic_. I was standin' right out there," he says, pointing with his thumb out at the deck, "and crying — I know; _lame_ — and thinking…" he falters, presses on: "that _that_ was the worst moment of my life."

Old Lady continues to pretend she isn't engrossed by his tale.

He looks contemplatively out the window, trying to picture himself back there, back then. Thinking he'd hit his bottom, thinking it would never improve, that he'd had real love and lost it by chance, and it had seemed real and kinda symbolic, letting go by throwing some hemp bracelet overboard.

He sighs loudly. "I was _so_ goddamn lame back then. But then Robin was mad at me, so I told her that story because she secretly _loves_ sappy crap like that, except since I'm _not_ lame, I'm _awesome_ , I… didn't actually do that."

He swallows. "With her."

He just accidentally told Robin a story about his breakup with _Shannon_.

 _Dammit_.

* * *

 _eighteen years ago…_

* * *

Sniffling, Barney throws the hemp bracelet over the side of the ferry. The fragile object sinks beneath the cold waves, to disintegrate, lost forever in the shifting tides. Just like his heart, fragile and insignificant, unwanted and discarded like a child's broken toy.

The salty air stings at his eyes, and Barney feels a few more tears escape. _Why_? he thinks, leaning bodily against the railing. _Why, Shannon_? When Rose did it at the end of the movie, it had felt powerful, but he only feels empty and cold, as if he dropped the remaining tatters of his heart, his soul, over the edge of the vessel, leaving what behind? Only himself, empty and bereft of love. He weeps, there on the deck of the ferry. _Why, Shannon? Why?_

* * *

Barney stays quiet for the rest of the ferry ride, and remains in his seat as the ferry docks at the island, trying to shake off the memories of how lame and uncool, etc., he used to be. Crying miserably against the railing of a _ferry_. Sure, it had made for a good, dramatic story when he thought it was about Robin, but now that he knows it was _Shannon_ , he feels only vague disgust.

If he could travel back in time, he'd… well, okay, _first_ he'd go back in time and meet Robert-Houdin, then take in the Star Wars premiere, _then_ a Robin Sparkles mall tour, but after all _that_ , he'd punch his past self in the face.

Is it normal to feel kind of queasy when you think about yourself in your twenties? It must be some kind of awesomeness deficit or something; there's something about it that isn't sitting with him well. It's not the fact that he got his stories confused — this one was definitely the more dramatic one — but… _Shannon_ , and _Robin_ , and, well.

And.

As the ferry fills back up with commuters, Barney straightens up in his chair with a jolting realization.

If the story was actually about a hemp bracelet…

…He has even _less_ of a clue where his wedding ring is.

 _Dammit_!

* * *

 _seven hours later…_

* * *

Robin goes to work, runs a couple of errands, and makes it home around six. She has the apartment to herself, so she takes a long bath, takes her time browsing Seamless, and settles down on the sofa with her gyoza and Nippon Ichi.

An episode of Hell's Kitchen later, it's nearly eight and she hasn't heard from Barney since… this morning, really. Did he _actually_ go diving in the bay? She's debating giving him a call when she hears the key in the door, and Barney arrives home. He looks a little rumpled, and has a serious look on his face that causes Robin to pause, sitting up on the sofa.

"Hey," she says, feeling a little trickle of apprehension. She didn't really have any qualms sending him off on a wild goose chase, but it strikes her now that he's been gone all day on a snipe hunt, and while she's not upset with him anymore, maybe _he_ is with _her._ That wasn't her goal, either. She pats the cushion next to her. "C'mere, sit down."

He doesn't, not right away. "I don't know where it is." He's not any more specific than that, but Robin knows what he's talking about.

"Yeah, I know," she says. She pats the sofa again, and he looks tired, comes to sit next to her. They've never really been the type to snuggle up on the sofa, and don't now, either. Robin's tempted to leave things as they are, but that's what got them into trouble in the past. "Look, about this morning," she says.

"Wait," he says quickly, "before we start fighting, I wanna say something."

"We're not fighting," she points out.

"Just… c'mon," Barney says, exasperated. "I have a speech, okay?"

She smiles and keeps her mouth shut.

He twists his body on the sofa so he's facing her, resting one arm on the back of the sofa. He takes a deep breath. "When I dated Shannon in college, I thought she was, you know, 'the one.'" He winces a little bit. "And when we broke up, I thought my life was over. I'd never love again and all that crap. Then I got really awesome, and I slept with two hundred and eighty three women, and I suited up and became ridiculously attractive, and my life totally rocked in every possible way…" He's starting to sound a little dreamy.

"I get it, being single is awesome," Robin asks, taking a swig of her beer.

"Right," Barney says, shaking himself out of his tangent. "I mean, no." He takes a breath. "Back then, before I got awesome, I thought my life was over, so I took the ferry and tried to symbolically let go of the past. Also because _Titanic_ had just come out."

Robin frowns. "So this morning, you were telling me a story about your _ex_?"

He doesn't quite meet her gaze for a second; then his eyes meet hers, serious and dark. "The point is… I spent weeks, back then, thinking I'd never be sadder, I'd never love again — I was basically Ted — and it sucked and was super lame. But none of it came even close to spending the last few months without you. And I don't know where I lost my ring, but I'll buy a new one, or maybe five new ones so I have some backups, and I'm sorry."

It's one of those times where Robin doesn't quite follow Barney's thought processes, but it doesn't seem to matter. She smiles at the earnest sincerity in his voice and expression, puts her hand on the side of his face. He relaxes at her touch. "It's fine," she says.

"I'm serious," he insists. "I can buy like, eight rings."

"No, really. You don't have to do that," she says, pulling away to reach into her pocket. The old Robin would have just let it go with his apology, but she's trying to do things differently this time. "I just freaked out this morning, okay? We haven't been back together that long, and…"

"Yeah," he says.

"I thought for a second it meant something more than it does. It's just… a piece of jewelry," she finishes. Sure, it still kind of irks her that he'd forget and apparently replace the memory with one of him in his twenties, but the details aren't as important as the big picture, this go around. And the big picture is Barney sitting next to her on their sofa in their apartment, the rest of their lives stretched out before them. "I don't want to lose _you_ ," she says. "I don't care about the ring." He smiles at her, and she loves and hates how happy he always is to hear things like that.

"Besides," Robin adds, dropping the object from her blouse pocket into her husband's palm.

He looks down at his wedding ring.

* * *

 _twelve hours earlier…_

* * *

Robin picks up another piece of the shattered glass. It's the last one she can see, but she crouches down once more to make sure she's not over looking any large pieces before she grabs the vacuum cleaner. There's a small gap between the floor and the fridge, and as she — grumbling — checks underneath it for stray shards of glass, she spots something small and metallic.

* * *

Barney gapes at her. "Under the fridge?"

"And that's why we don't take our rings off to do dishes," Robin says, a little smugly. She smiles at him, and the corner of his mouth lifts. He looks from her to the ring and back again. His smile twists, becomes a little bittersweet.

"And that's not all," Robin says. "After work, I went ahead and brought it to the jewelers." She nods at the ring, still sitting in his palm. "Check it out."

Barney lifts it closer to his face. There's a tiny engraving on the inside band of the ring, five words in all capital letters. "Aww," he coos.

"Just in case," says Robin, smiling into her beer.

She watches and pretends she isn't as he slides it back onto his wedding ring back onto his finger. He looks up.

"Were you supposed to do that, or something?" he asks. "I can take it back off,"

"Nah, I'm good," Robin says. They've both Tedded out enough for one day. "I love you," she says.

"I love you too," he replies easily. Pauses for half a second. "So."

"So," she says, smiling at the lower pitch of his voice.

He leans towards her. "Is there anything _else_ I can take off around here?"

* * *

 _six months ago…_

* * *

Barney comes home from the lawyer's office in a daze. Everything feels numb and dizzying, all at once, all his reasoning for why he wanted this suddenly falling flat. He finds himself standing in the living room, staring into space, and isn't sure how long he's been doing so. He needs a drink.

He goes to the kitchen to get a glass, and the light catches on his wedding ring as he reaches towards the cabinet. He hadn't thought about it; he was still wearing it. Why? It wasn't like —

He twists it off his finger, his skin pulling uncomfortably, and in one harried, unthinking movement, he throws it as hard as he can towards the garbage can. Useless. Everything he thought, everything he wanted — it's just trash.

The ring bounces off the can and rolls on the floor. Lost in his thoughts, he doesn't notice.

* * *

 _two hours later…_

* * *

"You're not putting a line of a Robin Sparkles song on my wedding ring," Robin says, rolling over to shove a pillow into his face.

"But there are so many inspiring lyrics!" he insists, pushing the pillow away and into her own face as she laughs. "If you're gonna engrave my ring, I think I should get to engrave yours, fair's fair."

"You have the worst taste in music," Robin chuckles, sitting up, running her hands through her tangled hair.

"Correction, I have _awesome_ taste in music," he says, folding his arms behind his head. "C'mon, take it off, I have the perfect lyric."

"Ooh," she says, looking over his shoulder at him flirtatiously. "There's nothing left to take off, baby."

He grins up at her, the edges of his eyes crinkling. "Your ring, give it to me," he says.

"Do I even want to know what you have in mind?" she asks, retrieving her pillow and starting to settle herself down for the night.

"It's perfect. Symbolic, meaningful, _hot_ , seven — no, eight words — " he rolls over to pin her to the bed, and she's not exactly against another round, but his mouth splits into an eager grin before they can get anything started. "' _I'm gonna rock your body 'til Canada Day._ '"

She laughs, and shoves him off the bed.

* * *

 _eight hours ago…_

* * *

"And if you could get the engraving done ASAP, I'd appreciate it," Robin says. "Do you need me to write it out for you?"

"No," the jeweler chuckles, "I'll be able to remember. _'Put it back on, idiot_ ' is certainly a new one."


End file.
